THE HILL: A special interest’s sweet deal

posted by Everglades Trust | 0sc
February 20, 2018

The Hill: Written by Virginia Foxx and Danny K. Davis. February 14, 2018.

This Valentine’s Day, when you buy your sweetheart that classic box of American chocolates or any other kind of sweet, you will also be paying a hidden tax that’s baked into every food, snack and treat.

This tax is courtesy of the U.S. sugar program, and it forces American consumers and small businesses to pay $2.4 - $4 billion to subsidize a handful of wealthy sugar processors every year according to the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). The U.S. sugar program is the only commodity subsidy program that has not been modernized in 80 years.

It’s time for this Congress to change that.

The program is a complicated bureaucratic mess of price supports, market allocations, quotas and government guarantees that are ultimately covered by taxpayer dollars. At the same time, the program drives up consumer prices by restricting needed sugar imports even as it restricts domestic production at home, leaving the U.S. market with constant shortfalls.